Indulging my love of poetry by posting a poem a day, every day... to inspire, delight and enlighten!

Saturday, 28 July 2012

Day 36: Mermaid

A fable is a story with animals or mythical creatures, which contains a moral. Aesop's Fables are a familiar name to many I'm sure.

But here we have a fable within a poem from Pablo Neruda. There are many layers of meaning and interpretation here, from a debate on gender relations, to the conflict between the natural and civilized worlds. Mermaids, of course, are a mythical symbol used to represent many different ideas, most usually associated with gender relations and feminism.

Me, I think it's a critique of men's boorish behaviour in the presence of women they perceive as 'other'! Or a woman finally getting what she wants (to be a desirous object of affection to the opposite sex) only to discover the emptiness of it. (Yep, I'm a feminist!) What do you think?

Oh, and I just love the description of the mermaid: Her eyes were the colour of distant love, her twin arms were made of white topaz. Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light.' Beautiful language as always from Neruda.

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks - Pablo Neruda

All those men were there inside,when she came in totally naked.They had been drinking: they began to spit.Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.She was a mermaid who had lost her way.The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.She did not speak because she had no speech.Her eyes were the colour of distant love,her twin arms were made of white topaz.Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,and suddenly she went out by that door.Entering the river she was cleaned,shining like a white stone in the rain,and without looking back she swam againswam towards emptiness, swam towards death.

I'd love to hear what you think! To leave a comment - comment as/sign in with your Google ID if you have one, or website or blog address, or if these don't apply, sign in as Anonymous, and leave your name if you like!

Poetry lovers, loathers or newbies - I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment by clicking on comments below a postand signing in with your Google ID, blog/website or Anonymous if these do not apply. Or feel free to email me at siobhanbsb@hotmail.com

The poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life. ~Robert Penn Warren

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~ Carl Sandburg

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. ~Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor

"Always learn poems by heart," she said. "They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like the fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.'"~ Janet Fitch, 'White Oleander'

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the development of an exclamation. ~Paul Valery

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~Robert Frost

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - Anne Sexton

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? ~ Emily Dickinson

The poet is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe who brings the whole soul of man into activity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge